A+

Goya Awards
I’m working on a continuous innovation programme to research key themes affecting longer term product strategy at News Corp. The main purpose is to identify trends in A) consumer behaviour, B) technologies, and C) talent management that challenge the way we create, edit, distribute and enjoy media. Based on this research, I create customer-centric prototypes of products that encapsulate and try to offer a strategic vision on what’s ahead. One of main my areas of research is visual storytelling, as I believe it is critical for any creative industry to fully maximise the power of visuals in an era of multiple screens. 

———

YouTube journalism vs. quality journalism
New visual storytelling narratives (1)
Mobile platforms are essentially sensorial animals in which visual content is king. One of our biggest challenges at News Corp is researching and developing meaningful visual storytelling narratives that help to deliver quality journalism and entertainment worth paying for. Quality journalism requires quality HD formats and techniques.

Newspapers and print media have borrowed and explored fiction techniques for decades. As part of a bigger project about visual story telling, I’m researching how cinematographic narratives could create textures that bring the content experience to an intimate level. 

Sea Bites, presented in the video above, is a project commissioned to award winning war journalists and film directors David Beriain and Sergio Caro founders of ‘En Pie de Guerra’, and members of Medina Media.

The objectives of the project are:

1. Researching quality cinematographic story telling narratives and techniques to present news stories.   
2. Introducing a new journalistic genre, a visual 360 first-person portrait in which images and sounds speak by themselves.
3. Creating an original soundtrack and defining the role of music and music composers in news gathering and storytelling. 
4. Challenging and verifying existing photography cameras and techniques (go-pro, helicopter, underwater, time lapse, slow motion) as well as innovative sound systems —multi-channel surround sound system like sound 5.1.
5. Questioning what would it be necessary to offer a genuine and exclusive experience. What cameras and sound technologies? Would they need to be created? Who’d be the right partner to do so?
6. Pulsing the potential of collectable content. As on TV-shows, serialising quality content on mobile might be efficient to drive subscriptions. What’s the right format and genre?
7. Exploring encyclopaedic and educational (timeless) content that live longer than stories which fit into the traditional 24/7 news cycle.

This is a first person portrait of an ordinary collector of goose barnacles (those lovely crustaceans!), one of the most appreciated and expensive delicatessen of the Spanish cuisine —last Christmas the price rocketed to £180 per kilo. The story is been filmed in Cedeira, a tiny village from Galicia, in the North West of Spain. The soundtrack has been created by musician and folk artist, Anxo Pintos, using local instruments. 

You can watch the making off in here, and learn about the team behind it. It’s been a great honour to work with David (thank you!), and I hope to come back to him soon with more challenging opportunities.